Best of the Week: June 13 – 17, 2016

TODAY: In 2010, Nobel Prize winner José Saramago dies. 

• “Homophobia, transphobia, and ideologically-nurtured hatreds of all kinds, coupled with semi-automatic weapons, provide the fuel for terror, in this case literally.” John Keene, Dawn Martin Lundy, and others respond to the mass shooting in Orlando. | Lambda Literary
• “I think in a very realistic, modern way, a three-dimensional way, and my role as a writer is to create language… This is what the challenge is for me: language… the word, the sentence, the paragraph.” Don DeLillo on Underworld. | The Guardian
• We are all too dumb for Helen DeWitt: How The Last Samurai cultivates ambition in its readers. | The Paris Review
• “Books that don’t engage the reader on an emotional level have a hard time staying with them, and if I want the reader to cry a little bit—and I do!—I also want them to laugh.” An interview with Dorthe Nors. | BOMB Magazine
• “Peat is harvested from bogs, watery mires where the earth yawns open.” A short story by Karen Russell. | The New Yorker
• Why we shouldn’t use periods, compellingly argued with the text conversation “I love my cat/I can’t live without her/Omg.” | The Washington Post
• “I am sure the 49 patrons who died at Pulse that night didn’t necessarily think of themselves as brave for being there. But they were.” Alexander Chee on the courage of being queer. | New Republic
• I am the writer, but I never write about this: Robin Wasserman on the difficulty of depicting her best friend’s death. | BuzzFeed Books
• Emma Cline on her childhood fascination with Charles Manson (and his “house”), stripping the glamor from cults, and past truly odd jobs. | The New York Times
• Sally Rooney and Joanna Walsh discuss the idea of “flow-state,” women and writing, and transgression. | Granta
• How Kourtney and Scott’s breakup (almost) might relate to Newland Archer and Countess Olenska: Jason Diamond on the parallels between the Kardashians and Edith Wharton. | Guernica
• “Beloved as she is by the progressives of the day, Didion began her career as a staunch conservative.” On Joan Didion’s politics. | The Hairpin
• On the flirtation of science and poetry, a very deep romance. | Financial Review
• It’s been a good half-year for poetry: Bernadette Mayer, Sjohnna McCray, and other must-read poetry collections from 2016. | Flavorwire
• “For an emerging writer of short stories set in the African continent, Nadine Gordimer was a model and a light.” A. Igoni Barrett on meeting (and being read by) a literary icon. | Catapult

And on Literary Hub:

• When your research starts to terrify you: Flynn Berry on the perils of writing about murder.
• Alana Massey on how she learned to stop worrying and empty her book shelves.
• A pilgrimage to the $7,500 Muhammad Ali book.
• Death and the animals: Pauls Toutonghi  on dogs that came back, trapped goats, and dying cats.
• Writer, mother, both, neither: Belle Boggs on childcare, AWP, and leading the triple life.
• Jonathan Russell Clark on the 30th anniversary of the death of Jorge Luis Borges.
• Think of the danger: four poems by Thea Brown.
• Alison Anderson on finding a real photograph of her fictional heroine.
• Road tripping while female: on the absence of women in the literature of American adventure.
• From dark surf noir to the zen of the waves, the best in surfer lit.
• A new poem by Christopher Soto for Orlando: “All the Dead Boys Look Like Me.”
• Laurie Anderson talks to Paul Holdengraber about childhood, storytelling, and hiding in plain sight.
• Happy Bloomsday! Karl Whitney on why on June 16th, everywhere you go is a small corner of Joyce’s Dublin; Tim Parks on James Joyce (genius, jerk); on the horrors and polylingual pleasures of translating Ulysses into French; and investigating the man in the macintosh, one of Ulysses’ shady characters.
• Luke Mogelson on the dark side of longform journalism.
• It’s Father’s Day on Lit Hub: A father, a son, a squid in the bed: Chris Forhan on the genius of four-year-old poets • Christy Wampole on longing, addiction, and patrilineal transmission • Six tales about fathers and sons that do not feature fathers and sons • Steve Edward on fatherhood: ruining the writing career, saving the writing • Patrick Ryan on the last book his father read • Gretchen Marquette on her father’s unexpected poetic life • Allison Wright visits dive bars with her dad.

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